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Topic: Hello from frozen Minnesota (Read 869 times)

Hello everybody. I found this forum while searching for heating nucs in the winter. I belong to beesource as well as §¤«£¿æ under the same username. I will claim §¤«£¿æ, but would like to make it clear that I am the opposite of a hippie. ;). This looks like a good community where you have experienced members but you will not get drowned out by the hundreds of new posts in a day like beesource.

A little beekeeping background. I live in the brainerd, Minnesota area. I am entering my third year. I started with tbhs and warres. My tbhs have caused me nothing but headaches so they are being scrapped and all comb is going to into empty Lang frames this spring. This fall I had two tbhs, one warre, and two langs going into winter. Right now my tbhs died, but my langs and warre are doing well. I do practice foundationless beekeeping, but I am not treatment free, however I really only treat for varroa. I also run 8 frame deeps with my langs with med supers.

This spring I plan on expanding my hive count with four packages. One will go into two drawn warre boxes and the other three will go into langs that will have my tbh combs strapped into them. I have a full 4 ft hive of mostly brood comb. So I should have enough to fill at least a deep for each package. That should give them a huge boost.

My goals for next season are to split my warre as many times as is safe, rear my own queens, and overwinter nucs. Right now my warre is on 4 boxes. Come mid to late may I plan on using a cloake board to rear a few queens and use those cells to make a nuc or two and split my warre into as many individual boxes as possible. I would like to winter a couple of nucs. Our weather is so frigid here that I am planning on using hard board insulation and heat tape to winter them.

I tried posting a link, but apparently it's against the rules. If you search Manitoba beekeeping there's a website where this guy basically creates a hard board insulation box around his nucs, which are huddled together. He then puts heat tape behind them. I really believe that if I can winter nucs I will achieve self sufficiency barring a complete winter die off.

Ya I have used this handle for 11 years and it wasn't until I got into beekeeping that was confused for somebody cool! I will have to put something in my sig to make sure people don't get confused because invariably bush is correlated with greatness.

Welcome to the forum, Bush_84. When I first saw your handle, I thought you maybe a fellow in my local club, not in Minnesota though. His name is Mr Bush and is about 84 years old. He used to be a commerical beek, Ithink he still has about 100 hives. I do get to rambling some times. Good luck with your bees.